RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Egyptian forces sealed the
last breach in the border with the Gaza Strip on Sunday,
stopping an influx of Palestinians into Egypt across a frontier
blown open by Hamas Islamists defying an Israeli-led blockade.

"It is closed. Go home," a militant from Hamas, which was
cooperating with Egypt in holding back Palestinians wanting to
leave Gaza, told the crowd gathered at the border. Many began
to leave the area.

Egyptian forces used barbed wire and metal barricades to
seal the only remaining gap on the Egyptian side of the
frontier at Rafah, a town straddling the border.

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An Egyptian officer said Gazans on the Egyptian side of the
frontier and Egyptians visiting the Gaza Strip would be allowed
to return home.

Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip by force in June, had
been under pressure from Egypt to stop the flow of hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians who crossed over since members of the
group blew open the border on January 23.

Egyptian security sources estimated there were less than
10,000 Palestinians still in Egypt.

Authorities in El-Arish, in the Sinai peninsula, formally
issued Egyptian entry stamps to some 800 Gazans, a step that
should enable them to fly on to other countries from the town's
airport, Palestinians sources said.

Gazans had flocked to the Egyptian side of Rafah to stock
up on goods that were in short supply in the Gaza Strip after
Israel tightened border restrictions in a declared bid to
pressure Palestinian militants to halt rocket attacks.

A spokesman for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Egypt
would not permit Palestinians to overrun its frontier again.

"Egypt absolutely will not allow a repeat of what happened
because it has a border, territory and sovereignty, and it is
Egypt's right and duty to preserve that," spokesman Suleiman
Awad said in remarks carried on Egyptian state news agency
MENA.

"RELIABLE BARRIER"

An Israeli defense official said it was too early to tell
whether Egypt had managed to choke off the movement of people
into its territory. "There is a difference between putting up
some fencing in front of a bunch of TV crews and truly
restoring a reliable barrier," the official said.

Yuval Diskin, head of Israel's internal intelligence
agency, told a cabinet session militants had used the opening
to bring into Gaza longer range rockets and fighters trained
abroad.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak urged the building of a barrier
along the Israel-Egypt border, which stretches 180 km (113
miles) to prevent "terror and smuggling."

The Rafah crossing, once controlled by the Palestinian
Authority and overseen by European monitors, had been largely
closed since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in fighting
against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group.

At the border on Sunday, Palestinian families reunited by
the fall of the Rafah wall faced separation again.

"This is not right, this is injustice," said Jamil Toman, a
Palestinian and Cairo resident who had been visiting Gaza.

Toman, 63, left the Gaza Strip before the 1967 war in which
Israel captured the territory, and has not been able to get an
Israeli permit to return for the past 40 years.

After talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Saturday,
Hamas's Mahmoud al-Zahar said the group "will restore control
over this border, in cooperation with Egypt, and gradually."

Hamas has demanded a central role in controlling the border
with Egypt. Talks in Cairo on Saturday between Khaled Meshaal,
a Hamas leader who lives in exile, and Egyptian officials ended
without a formal agreement on frontier arrangements.

(Additional reporting by Cynthia Johnston in Cairo and Dan
Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Avida
Landau in Jerusalem; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)